Hinting, is anyone still using it?

Mike Duggan · June 25

Just curious to know, if anyone is still using hinting, or probably autohinting still? I did notice a post about some new tools for autohinting Variable fonts, but wondering have we reached the point yet that its just not needed anymore

Todd Johnson · June 25

My opinion, yes, still needed. I use TTFAutohint, then check and adjust with YGT.

John Hudson · June 25

By default, our font build tool uses TTFAutohint. Coincidentally, Mike, I was thinking about you in this context a couple of days ago, because I recall you did some tests of different configuration options for TTFAutohint. Our build tools can take hinting and gasp table configuration input, but to date I have just run them with default settings. I was thinking I might ask you to review the output when I have a budget for consulting, and see if the results can be improved by tweaking the configuration.

Aaron Bell · June 25

I did a hinting project 2 weeks ago.

Given the long tail of low resolution devices I think there will still be value in manual hinting for quite some time still. And I feel it especially so when I look at the poor output of autohinters. Better not to hint at all than use tools that only really work on Latin, and general sans-serif.

Mike Duggan · June 26

thanks Aaron & John! John, keep in touch if you need this at any point. Aaron I agree, and yes it does appear to be a very long tail. Variable font hinting is something that VTT handles well, but as far as I recall TTFautohint doesn't handle Variable fonts, so was curious about how folks include hinting in any new variable fonts.

Jens Kutilek · June 26

At LucasFonts, we still manually hint all of our retail and most of our custom fonts (TTF and OTF). For TTF (static and variable), we hint multiple master sources in FontLab 5 and use a custom compiler to output VTT assembly, which is then compiled to byte code with vttLib. This allows us to cater for rendering environments that FL5 doesn't know about due to its age. I've also rewritten some of FL5's fpgm functions to have nicer zone alignment, nudge accents away from the base glyph if they collide in certain sizes, etc.

Typedesigner · June 29

I'm curious about your workflow at LucasFonts. Is there a particular reason why you still work in FontLab 5 instead of FontLab 8? I've been using FontLab 8 myself and have really come to appreciate many of the newer features, so I'd be interested to hear what keeps FontLab 5 preferable in your production workflow.

Jens Kutilek · July 8

It's just that Lucas is working fastest in the version of FontLab that he knows by heart because he has been using it for the last 20 years. And we probably know most bugs in FL5 by now and how to work around them. Lucas also thinks the forced master compatibility in FL5 is superior to masters possibly going out of sync in other editors.
We have a large collection of Python scripts in FL5, which would need to be reworked for newer FL versions. It would be a big effort to change the working environment completely, from getting used to new app versions, to changing workflows that can't be transferred 1:1, and all that in addition to ongoing client work.
It's not that we don't use other apps where appropriate; we occasionally use FL8 to convert files and check data, and we also use Glyphs for some projects where data needs to stay in Glyphs format or where we can profit from Glyph's automation, e.g. for Arabic. Lucas also mainly uses Glyphs for teaching his university course.

Mark Simonson · July 8

Wasn't Lucas using Font Studio long past when it was considered obsolete?

John Hudson · July 8

We have a large collection of Python scripts in FL5

I still occasionally fire up FLS5 to run one of the scripts for which I don’t have any equivalent in FL8. I have occasionally considered paying someone to port them to the new architecture, but they’re occasional rather than regular tools.

Dave Crossland · July 8

Mark Simonson said:

Wasn't Lucas using Font Studio long past when it was considered obsolete?

https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-30600.html says so

Kris Sowersby · July 9

We manually hint all our fonts. It’s too risky not to. I’d prefer not, but this is the world we’re operating in!

Mike Duggan · July 11

thank you all, for the comments and insights!

Hinting, is anyone still using it?

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